Monday, May 28, 2007

Print O the Wave - FINISHED!

Needles: 3.75mm Rosewood Circulars. Truly a dream to knit with.Yarn: Kid silk haze, 5 whole balls. Well, I have 3/4 a ball left over, very frustrating, I think if I did it again I'd probably make it a slightly tighter gauge which would keep it to 4 balls.Pattern: Print O the Wave Stole from Eunny. It has mistakes, it's not especially well written. I really think she should go over this pattern again. It'd take her 5 minutes to fix and re-upload. As a free pattern on a blog, it's fine (though I'd expect an et cetera), but there are too many problems for it to be a decent calling card for the editor of Interweave. Still, the finished piece was nice enough. We gave it to Marcus' Gran this weekend (for her 80th birthday) - he was right, the colour really does bring out her eyes.

EDIT: Mistakes are as Eunny posted in knitter's review (see comments on this post). I did the two panels, but if I did it again I'd do just one. I actually think it'd look nicer.

First of all, lovely, lovely, lovely. And, I happen to have four balls of Kid Silk lying around waiting for a project. What errors did you encounter, if I may be so bold? I have had this on the radar for a while, but I won't tackle it if there are big faults without knowing what they are.

This is what Eunny wrote about the pattern in the Knitter's Review Forums:

I've learned a lot about pattern writing since I released that bugger, but I never seem to get around to putting up a better-formatted version. There are a couple things to note:

1) The shawl has NOT been test-knit with laceweight and size 4 needles. From what I understand from people who have made it, the finished shawl is VERY large (~70 inches long) and takes a little more yarn than stated: ~900 yards. I've been knitting a version with laceweight and size 2 needles, too - I really like the look at that gauge. You may wish to experiment on different needles as well.

2) If knitting with cobweb yarn, be aware that no one seems to make a 00 circular - mysteriously, I have a no-name circular that measures at exactly the right metric measurement, but I've never been able to find a commercial source. You can always, of course, knit the shawl on lace knitting pins - I believe Inox makes a lovely long steel set in 00.

3) The way the pattern repeat for the body is indicated can be a little confusing. The pattern repeat is outlined in RED - though the bracket might look a little short depending on how you look at it, and the gridlines on the chart might confuse you, pay attention only to the RED lines for the correct repeat.

4) As written, Chart B for the edging contains an error. The second-to-last stitch of rows 9, 11, 13 and 15 should be marked as a k2tog.

Really lovely. Such a pretty colour and it really does look like a foaming sea and quite mermaid like. What a great gift! I need to get into gear - my mum's birthday is very soon and the kiri needs finishing.

It's very lovely. My own experience with this pattern had me abandoning the project after one too many false starts. I thought there was something wrong with me! Now that I know there's an errata out there, I'll give it another go.

Amazing shawl! You are a brave woman, I used KSH for the Swallowtail and the results were amazing, but I ripped and started over three times, it was rough going! Thanks for the extra info on the pattern, I've been wanting to knit this for a while!

response to 'anonymous' - I didn't put the shade in my final FO post because it was obviously a one-off odd dye-lot. It's officially 'hurricane', but an oddly light version that's inbetween it and 'trance'.

Ooh, I just found this through Ravelry. I love it! It hadn't occurred to me to use kidsilk haze for this pattern, but I do have a few balls lying around unloved and without anything in mind... and this is beautiful. I do feel a bit daunted by the prospect of picking up however many hundreds of tiny fuzzy little stitches along the edge though...!

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.